Luke McCallin - The Man from Berlin

Reinhardt nodded. ‘I understand. For if anyone asks.’

‘And if they ask, the man in the shop will tell anyone he sold it to you for three kuna .’

Reinhardt nodded again. ‘Three? Cheap at the price,’ he said as he put it in his pocket.

The ghost of a smile flickered across Simo’s face, and then he turned away and was gone. Reinhardt put the film case under his arm as he walked slowly back down the alley, putting the magazine back in his pistol before he holstered it. As he came up to the exit to the little street, he saw across the road the man who had been the waiter at the coffee shop. The man was looking at him and made the smallest of motions to Reinhardt to stop. He looked left and right, then back at him and nodded, and then he was gone too, and Reinhardt stepped out of the alley into the sunshine.

He walked quickly back to the coffee shop, feeling a lift in his step. Thallberg was not there. He glanced at his watch. He had been gone about forty-five minutes. He should be here. He put his head into the shop and asked the old man as best he could if he had seen him. The old man came squinting out from behind his row of blackened kettles, wiping his hands on a rag. The pair of them talked past each other for a moment, and then Reinhardt gave up. He smiled, patted the man on the arm, and went back outside. He looked around the square, looked at the film case, and then knew where he needed to go.

Padelin hammered on the door, short staccato bursts of three, until it finally opened. ‘Can you play this?’ Padelin said, showing the case of film to Jelic. He took the case, turned it over in his hands, and nodded. ‘Do it now,’ said Padelin, pushing past him into the studio.

‘Come in, make yourself at home,’ Jelic muttered under his breath. From the look on his face, it was clear Jelic had not expected them back. He pointed to the big table they had sat at earlier while he inserted the film in a projector and began making adjustments. Padelin sat at the table with his big hands folded one within the other, the knuckles stark and pale. Reinhardt shook a cigarette loose and stared at him. What was he thinking, he wondered. Was he frightened of what he would see, of seeing Marija Vukic in a way that he might have imagined but would never have thought possible?

He felt Reinhardt looking at him and turned those flat, catlike eyes on him. ‘This had better be worth it,’ he said, again.

‘I think it will be,’ said Reinhardt, around a mouthful of smoke.

‘And you cannot tell me where you got it from?’

‘Not yet, no. I’m sorry.’ Padelin worked his mouth as if around something noxious.

‘Over there, on that screen,’ Jelic finally said as he switched off the lights and drew the curtains. A white light shone on the screen, then flickered grey and black, and an image juddered into life. It steadied into black and white and showed the bedroom in Vukic’s house, with the bed made up. There was no sound. In the mirror on the wall over the bed, they could see movement, reflected movement. Someone, two people, moving around in the living room.

They came closer, into view, and it was Vukic and someone else. They stumbled from side to side, clutched in each other’s embrace. Vukic, and a man. Taller than her, a head of grey hair, almost white, close-cut. Big shoulders, big arms came into view as she pulled a white shirt from his back. He had a belly on him, this man, but it seemed he was made more of muscle and bone than fat. They came closer into view, turning and stumbling, and Reinhardt leaned towards the screen, trying to see. Trousers. If he was a general, he would have a stripe down his trousers. But nothing. He had taken them off elsewhere and stood with his backside bare towards the camera. Vukic turned him and pushed him down onto the bed. He bounced on it, shuffling himself excitedly up onto the pillows with his arms outstretched to her. With a thick mat of fur on his chest, with his thick arms and legs, he looked like a bear. He looked like the man in the photo from Hendel’s file.

Vukic sauntered towards the end of the bed, with the faintest flicker of her eyes towards the hidden camera. She undid the back of her dress and let it slide to the floor. She stood clad only in her garters and belt, stood in such a way that they could see her in the other mirror, at the head of the bed. Reinhardt felt his breath go thick in his throat at the sight of her, and he could feel as much as see the man on the bed go still with desire. She lifted one knee onto the bed, then the other, sliding up and over and then astride him as if he were a horse, and she its rider.

There followed then what seemed to Reinhardt to be an interminable blur of limbs and quivering flesh, and a shifting kaleidoscope of positions. They were not two people making love. Not even two humans having sex. They were two animals rutting. When it was finally over, the man was kneeling behind her, the line of his thighs and back taut with his pleasure, and his hands clamped around the flesh of her buttocks. He collapsed onto the bed next to her, his chest rising and falling, and she lowered herself to her stomach. After a while, he got up, passing in a blur of white in front of the camera, and returned with two glasses and a bottle of champagne. He poured, and they lay in bed, talking and drinking and smoking. Another period of time passed, and he rose from the bed again. Vukic lay there a moment, then stretched like a cat. She looked right at the camera, smiled, and rose from the bed. In the mirror on the other wall they saw her walk into the living room and out of the camera’s view.

Reinhardt swallowed and let out a breath slowly. Padelin had sat still throughout the film, unbending, every line of his body screaming a kind of outraged severity. Now, it seemed as though there were a tremor deep inside him, a quiver that seemed to move from within to without.

‘There’s more,’ whispered Reinhardt. ‘There must be more.’

More time went by. Reinhardt concentrated on the mirror, where it showed something of what was happening in the living room. Something lurched into view, a blurred scramble of grey and black and white in the doorway as reflected in the mirror. Movement suddenly erupted onto the screen, two people struggling arm in arm. Vukic and the man, half dressed. He ducked his head beneath the swing and clutch of her fingers, gripped her head in one hand, punched her with the other. He hammered at her with his fists, and she fell to the floor. He kicked her in the side, slammed his foot down on her back. He took her by the hair and dragged her up, twisted her around, and punched her once, twice, a third time. She went limp. He hit her again, and again, and then his fist paused, stayed raised. He let her go, and she collapsed backwards and rolled onto her back. The man struggled to his feet, one hand on his knee, the other raised to his face. His chest heaved, and then he stepped back and was gone.

More time passed. Eventually, she stirred, hauled herself onto the bed, where she lay. Rolling onto one elbow, she pushed herself up and stumbled into the bathroom. She came out, holding a towel wadded to her mouth and leaning against the wall. She stumbled past the camera, into the living room, and was gone. The film ran on. In the mirror, Reinhardt could see movement from time to time. Probably her. Then it was over. The film juddered to a halt, and there was the clatter of the end of the reel going around and around on the projector.

Reinhardt drew in a long, slow breath around the weight he found in his chest.

‘ Picku materinu! ’ grated Padelin.

There was the strike of a match behind them. Jelic cleared his throat. Reinhardt had forgotten he was even there. ‘Now that,’ Jelic said, around a cigarette, a tremor in his voice, ‘is the Marija I remember.’